God Took My Money - Or So I Thought

by Elroy Willis -- August 8, 2004

TUSKEGEE (EAP)
-- In what seems to be a unique legal case, a 14-year-old Tuskegee boy
is being sued by his mother for emotional and financial damages caused
by him pretending to be God via a remote-control tape recorder he planted
under the dinner table.

The boy is counter-suing for child abuse because of the beating
he received after being found out.

"I was trying to get my mother to stop praying at meals, but my plan
sort of backfired," said Toby Adams, who ended up replacing the tape
recorder with a walkie-talkie and asking for money and gifts from his
mother each night.

"I want all of those things back now that I know my son was just
trying to fool me," says Loretta Adams, who says she never thought
to look under the table until she started hearing static as well
as the voice of God.

"The first voice I heard told me to quit praying and thanking God
for the food at the table. I heard it loud and clear, and thought I
might be hallucinating, but then the voice repeated itself, so I asked
my son if he could also hear the voice."

"I said I also heard it and told my mother that we should follow the
advice, thinking that it would put an end to the superstitious praying
that she does every day, but I guess that was a mistake, because my mother
started praying even more than she did before," Toby said.

"I could hear her praying at the table while I was in bed and decided
to put a walkie-talkie under the table and start talking to her
directly and telling her to quit praying whenever I could hear her
praying at the table."

That didn't work, so greed took over at that point as the Adams
boy started giving advice to his mother, and asking for different
things to see if she would comply.

It started with a pair of expensive sneakers and the latest
Playstation video games and went on from there, all the way down to
cash money laid out on the dinner table each night.

"I would sneak down at night while my mother was asleep and take the
money, and she thought God was taking it just like Santa drinking
the milk and eating the cookies I used to leave out for him,"
Toby said.

Things took a turn for the worse when the batteries in the walkie-talkie
ran low and static started appearing, and it was only then that Loretta
Adams looked under the table and found the source of the voices she'd
been hearing.

"I went upstairs and took a beltstrap to my son, giving him a good
beating for tricking me," she said.

Toby reported the incident to one of his teachers who then reported
it to a local child abuse agency which is seeking to have Toby removed
from his home for his own protection.